The government says 2,500 post offices are earmarked for closure this year because the network is losing £4m a week - largely due to falling numbers of customers.

'In denial'

Mr Clegg asked why any low earner should support the government, when their tax rate had been "doubled" - a reference to the abolition of the 10p tax rate - and 4.5 million people had been left "in fuel poverty".

The prime minister said his government had taken a million pensioners out of poverty and was "on the road" to doing the same for one million children. He said the Liberal Democrats had opposed his plans for the New Deal, to get people back into work.

Once again the Liberal party are proposing to spend huge sums of extra money without having any recognisable way of paying for them

But Mr Clegg said: "The prime minister's living in denial. If he want people to believe that he cares for the poor, he should act as though he does."

In a reference to former Labour leader Neil Kinnock's 1985 party conference speech, he said: "Is he not ashamed at the grotesque chaos, to quote Neil Kinnock, of a Labour government scuttling around the country, handing out closure notices to over five thousand local post offices?"

He urged Mr Brown to say he would stop all further post office closures "right now".

But the prime minister said four million fewer people were using the post offices than a few years ago, and said he had given the network £1.7bn.

"Once again the Liberal party are proposing to spend huge sums of extra money without having any recognisable way of paying for them.

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